So my first blog post was one year ago. Woohoo! It was titled “You Have To Start Somewhere” and if I remember correctly, I felt like a complete fraud because right after posting it I went out and bought my kids a piano to go along with the old Hammond Organ we rescued from the curb. Everyone needs both a piano and an organ, right? In that first post I talked about just how overrun my house was with toys, clothes, and lot of other stuff. One year later as I glance around my house, I don’t really feel like I’ve made a lot of progress but my wife and I just had a conversation this weekend and she assured me that more things have left the house than have come in. We’ve had Easter Seals and Purple Heart pick up piles of stuff multiple times and I’ve taken two large carloads of clothes and baby stuff to a nearby pregnancy crisis center. We’ve delivered or mailed at least three carloads of clothes and toys to family and friends. Somehow, I still find myself tripping over Legos and cars. I started taking pictures of the piles of stuff we were getting rid of to have some inspiration when I start to feel like I’m not making progress. Here are a few for your enjoyment: I’ve learned a lot in the past year about why we hold on to things we don’t need and some of the best methods to let them go. I’ve also learned a lot about running a website. I’ve learned some HTML and some search engine optimization (SEO). I discovered something called Markdown which is a tool specifically for writing content for the internet. You can write in a text editor or an editor made specifically for Markdown and then easily convert that into HTML. I’ve also learned how to use tools for automated emails and where to find quality free images to use on my blog when I don’t have one of my own. Hopefully, you’ll notice some changes for my one-year anniversary. First, I created a new logo. Maybe I’ll have some t-shirts, hats, and coffee cups made up or something! Just kidding. No one needs more of that junk. Also, after a year of posting sporadically I’m committing to posting something at least weekly. Hopefully it will even be something worth reading and I really hope I can inspire others to rid their lives of the extra stuff sitting around taking up your time and space. Thanks for celebrating one year with me. If you’re new, please take a look around the site and read some of my older posts. Follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Send me an email. It will come directly to me and I’ll be happy to respond. Cheers! In the Army, we have a format for mission planning called an Operation Order, or op-order for short. When I was learning to be an officer, it was called the Five Paragraph Operation Order, even after the Army added a sixth paragraph for safety. Since my mission is decluttering, I decided to make a basic op-order for the process. In this post, I’ll describe an op-order and then put a rough one together using my son’s room as an example. Later, I’ll put it to the test and let you know how it goes. Here are the main parts of an op-order with a short description of each. The full Army version has many sub-bullets for each. See the link above for more details.
A Note on the Execution ParagraphIn the Army, we used a method called backwards planning to develop a timeline in the execution section. Backwards Planning is just a cool sounding term for something that most of us do every day when we figure out what time we need to get out of bed in the morning so that we get to work on time. I always thought it was ridiculous how much time we spent learning and practicing this process because it seemed so obvious to me. Unfortunately, I’m often surprised to find how many people just do not get the concept. Backwards planning starts with a specific time that you need to be somewhere or do something. Then you work backwards from there taking into account what activities need to happen before that critical time and how long each of them takes. Some tasks can be done in parallel and some cannot. It’s that simple. For example, you need to be at work by 8 am. OK. The last thing you do before leaving might be to pack your bag and grab your coat, etc. That takes about 5 minutes. Breakfast takes 15 minutes. 20 minutes for a shower. At least 10 minutes to pack lunch. Don’t forget the fact that you like to snooze the alarm for 10 minutes every morning and that it takes an average of 30 minutes just to get to work. Add all that up and it looks like you need to get up about 6:30 am. In ClosingI didn’t want to make this too long so I’ll save the actual op-order for later but I think that in general the Army is on to something when it comes to planning out how to accomplish a large task and share that vision with others with the operations order. I’ll let you know how it goes as soon as I can test this out and I’ll post my written op-order. I’m coming up on my one year anniversary since my first blog post so that might be a good topic to celebrate with. Thanks for reading. If you have time, please share this or another post on your favorite social media outlet and feel free to subscribe to email updates below. A few days ago, my youngest son was surveying the kids’ playroom filled with toys and announced to my wife, “Mom, you know what the great thing about having so many toys is? If someone breaks in, they can’t possibly steal all of it!”Needless to say, decluttering fever hasn’t exactly become an epidemic at my house. I haven’t given up hope though because they are slowly coming around. How and where do you get rid of toys?Recently, we’ve been able to remove a few large items like the plastic play structure with slide that my youngest got for his first birthday. After selling it on one of the local Facebook groups, we can again see some of the floor in their playroom. We purchased it used on Craigslist for about $50 and sold it for $30. It still looked new and we put the money in his savings account so that it will be a gift that keeps on giving. We had an even larger one in our backyard that was left by some former neighbors. That one also went on Facebook but since we didn’t buy it, we donated the money to the local ACS Relay for Life event. Keep it localI’ve come to like the Facebook garage sale groups and definitely prefer them to eBay and Craigslist. The ones that we use are closed groups for people who live locally and since we live in a small town, we often end up having some sort of connection to the purchaser (my neighbor’s hairdresser, for example). The bonus is that it’s free unlike eBay and I don’t concern myself with shipping. Sometimes, people even put things on the curb with the garbage and post it on the Facebook group just to say it’s there if anyone wants it. Back to the toys…Now that they have some floor space, they recently set up their large hex-bug track. If you’ve never seen hex-bugs, they’re little vibrating robots that are about an inch and a half long and if you don’t have them contained by something, they will probably disappear under your oven or couch. I didn’t realize just how much track or how many hex-bugs they had until I saw it all set up! Without much space to play with them, it all usually sits at the back of a closet. I’ve also noticed the kids started playing with their remote controlled cars again. I’m trying to drive home the point that as they remove the things that they don’t play with, they have more room to enjoy the stuff that they really want to do. Have a long-term vision and share it with your kidsI’ve also been sharing my vision with them of the future state of that room. It really is a large room and could be used for so many things. It has a brick wall at one end with a fireplace and on the side wall is the sliding door that opens out onto the patio. So far the rule has been that they just need to keep a path clear for me to get to the door so I can grill dinner and there have been many times where I had to make my own path. My vision though, is a few large comfortable chairs near the fireplace, a hot tub sunk into the floor, and maybe a pool table. This hardly sounds like a minimalist dream, but I’m OK with that. In my vision, there isn’t much else in the room except maybe a TV and mini-fridge. I could see myself hanging out there with family and friends a lot and that’s ultimately what it’s all about. Looking for more ideas?Take a look at an earlier post I wrote with more ideas on where to get rid of things, without just tossing them in the garbage. While you’re here, you might as well leave a comment, share your favorite post on social media, or even get crazy and subscribe to my weeklyish newsletter. Thanks for reading. With three kids, we have quite a stockpile of games in our house, both electronic and traditional board games. My current favorite though is Mancala. We love playing the game and my daughter is very good at. So good that, at the age of 9, she usually beats everyone she goes against. I love the simplicity of Mancala. 48 rocks, 2 rows of 6 cups, and a cup at each end (the Mancala). The setup is so simple that it occurred to me you could easily play this just about anywhere by gathering together some rocks, sticks, pennies, or whatever else you can find 48 of and marking off the cups with something. Setup and PlayThe photo at the top of this post shows the initial set up. Each player has a side of the board with 6 cups and a larger cup at the end to the player’s right. 4 stones go in each of the 12 cups. One player goes first and takes all of the stones out of one of their cups. Then going counterclockwise, place one stone in each cup, including their own mancala, but not the opponent’s mancala. If the last stone placed on your turn lands in an empty cup on your side of the board, take that stone and any stones in the opponent’s cup across from it, and place them in your mancala. This is called a capture. An important rule to note is that if the last stone you place lands in your mancala, you get another turn. Here is a typical first move, which allows that player to go a second time. This is the standard second move my daughter makes to follow up. It's generally downhill for me from here. Occasionally she lets me go first but even then I have difficulty winning. When one player’s side is empty, the game is over. The players count the stones in their mancala and also add in any that are left on their side. The player with the most stones is the winner. HistoryWhile the game originated in Africa, the name mancala actually comes from an Arabic word naqala which means “to move”. After doing some research it turns out that what I think of as the game Mancala is actually a classification or type of game that is played all over the world. Wikipedia lists a wide variety of names for different variations and the countries they are played in. The American version is apparently called Wari or Kalah depending on what website you read. MathLearning the history and variations of Mancala was pretty interesting but what my college degrees should have prepared me for was the mathematics behind winning the game. I won’t describe it here, but feel free to visit the Wikipedia article or continue to some of the sources cited there for the technicalities. Suffice it to say that, at least in most versions of Mancala, the player to go first has a major advantage if they know what they are doing. If you’re really into mathematics, the genre that applies to Mancala is called combinatorial game theory. Here’s a link to just one research paper on the subject just in case you’re having trouble falling asleep tonight. Just Start PlayingI suppose you could get the game and read up on the strategy. Then start challenging and beating your friends if that’s the sort of boost your ego needs. Instead, I recommend you buy one of the versions below (or build your own) and spend some time with your family. (These are Amazon Affiliate links below. If you click on them and buy one of these products, I will earn a small commission. The cost to you is the same. This is the only way that I compensate myself for the time I spend on this website. Notice there are no banners, pop-ups, or other advertising here.) For Christmas, my daughter received the four-player version below which has been fun. This allows more of us to play the game together and also complicates the game so that the standard strategies don’t always help. Isn’t It IronicBy the way, I realize the irony of a blog about getting rid of stuff where I recommend you bring something else into your home, but keep in mind the goal of getting rid of that stuff you don’t need or use. The goal is to free up time from maintaining all of that useless stuff so you can spend some time with those important to you. Simple board games like Mancala are a good way to spend that time. Thanks. I've read several minimalist blogs about how people travel the world with nothing but a small backpack. Tynan, for example, is one of my heroes who lives in a Winnebago and spends a few months each year traveling the world with a 19 liter backpack. He wrote a book called (Warning: Amazon affiliate link ahead) Life Nomadic that I've been meaning to read. That all sounds great, but unfortunately my family doesn't travel light. No matter how much I plead with my kids not to pack an extra bag full of stuffed animals, our car always seems filled to capacity when we head out on vacation. I even had to buy one of those rooftop luggage carriers for the top of our SUV. Unfortunately, because we always have a carload of stuff, I didn't even realize that we headed out on our vacation last summer without my oldest son's suitcase. That's right. We left for a 10 day trip through five states with my son's suitcase sitting on his bedroom floor. The fact that his bedroom floor is so covered that no one noticed a suitcase laying among the Nerf guns, Legos, sheet music, and Erector Set components is another part of the problem. Luckily for him though, he did have some clothes with because we were stopping for two nights at my in-law's house. I refuse to bring everyone's suitcase in from the car when we are only staying somewhere for a night or two as part of a longer trip. For that reason, we pack one overnight bag that has just what we need for that short stop. Since we were spending two nights he at least had a pair of pajamas and a couple days worth of clothes. That evening after we got to my in-law's house, I ran out to a store to buy him a few more clothes. For long trips like this, I often will also pack one bag just for swimming. That way we have all of the swim suits, towels, swim goggles, and sunscreen together and can easily find them. Each of the kids also packs a backpack with things to keep them entertained in the car. Honestly, it would have been far more tragic for all of us had he left his backpack at home, so given the choice between his suitcase and the backpack-o-fun, I'm glad he left the clothes at home. Miraculously, my son survived the ordeal unscathed and when we returned home I made a point to talk to the kids about how he managed to get by without all of that stuff he had packed in his suitcase. I'm not sure any of them got the message, but we'll find out this summer when we do it all over again. So the next time you're packing for a trip, think hard about whether you really need to lug all of that stuff around. I suggest two things to help you pack: First, have a list of what you need so you don't forget things that really are necessary. We keep a spreadsheet with several tabs. Each tab is for specific types of trips (e.g. a vacation involving air travel and staying in a hotel, a weekend road-trip to my in-laws, a long road trip that encompasses a hotel stay as well as visits with relatives). Each family member has their own color-coded column on each list. The colors are for the type of bag (e.g main suitcase, backpack, toiletry bag, etc.). Several days before a trip we'll print the appropriate list and add any specifics to it like a gift for the birthday party you're going to.
Second, pack what you think you need and then going back through what you've just packed and decide what you can pull back out. We don't put quantities on our lists because it will change depending on the length of the trip. While writing this, I found the website http://www.onebag.com/. Take a look there for a good explanation of the benefits of traveling light as well as recommendations on how to do it including lots of checklists. Good luck. |
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